Proposal CAA sub-committee publications

From:    CAA Publications Committee
To:        CAA Steering Committee, CAA2004 Organizing Committee
Date:    23 March 2004

Problem statement

The price of the printed CAA proceedings has in recent years risen to a level that few people can afford, or find it worth their while to do so. The main cause of the price rise is undoubtedly the growth in the size of the CAA conferences with the ensuing growth in the number of papers published. The high price is an obstacle to the accessibility of the printed proceedings and hence to the impact of its content. The growth of the conference has also resulted in a greater variation in the quality of the papers, resulting in an uneven quality to the proceedings, with many papers below the standard expected of a high cost scientific publication. Successive local organisers have attempted to deal with these problems in different ways, adding a further problem in that there is now no longer a consistent CAA editorial policy.

To a large extent, these current problems follow directly from the general CAA philosophy of openness and autonomy for the local conference organizers. We here quote the relevant parts of its constitution. The aims of the annual CAA conferences, according to Article 2, are:

a) to bring together archaeologists, mathematicians and computer scientists;

b) to encourage communication between these disciplines;

c) to give a survey of present work in the field;

d) to stimulate discussion and future progress.

Furthermore (article 5, ii), the CAA Steering Committee should arrange for the publication of the conference proceedings. It is specified in article 9(ii), that: ‘In assessing the offers from future organisers, the Steering Committee shall consider two main areas, [namely] the extent to which the proposed arrangements support the aims of the Conference, and the viability of the proposed arrangements. Once appointed, the organisers shall be given as much freedom as possible to experiment with new ideas so that successive Conferences do not stagnate into a traditional format but continue to change and grow with changing times. Care should be taken to keep its appeal as wide as possible’.

Objective

The members of the publication committee have been charged at the 2003 Vienna Annual General Meeting (AGM) to investigate these problems and to propose ways of solving them, in the form of recommendations to the Steering Committee and, through them, to the 2004 AGM at Prato.

We will distinguish in our recommendations between that which lies within the normal powers of the AGM and the Steering Committee (e.g., changing the rules for the conference and the proceedings, setting up a web section for the digital publication of ‘proceedings’ with a low shelf life), and that which would require a major shift in / addition to established CAA policies (e.g., setting up a peer-reviewed journal). Given our extensive discussion on the latter topic, we now believe that setting up and maintaining such a journal is not a task the CAA as an organisation should attempt.

Recommendations

It is important to CAA as an organisation, and to the participants of the annual conferences, that its proceedings should be made available widely, and should be as valuable and as influential as possible. These objectives can only be reached if the conference proceedings are made cheaper, more easily accessible, and follow higher quality standards. The immediate problems of the high cost, low quality, and patchy distribution of the printed proceedings can be solved to a large extent by a combination of the following measures:

1: the cost of the printed CAA proceedings can be lowered, and their scientific appeal increased, by providing free web access to the full conference proceedings whilst applying stricter editorial policies to the printed proceedings in order to reduce their volume. Specifically, by (a) putting the full proceedings as PDF documents on the CAA web site, (b) publishing editorial guidelines for the selection of papers to be published in print, and (c) applying a system of peer review to the printed proceedings.

Although there might be some objections to dual (web and print) publication of some of the papers, we believe these can be overcome, and they certainly do not outweigh the obvious advantages. Creating more strictly edited printed proceedings will, however, require the co-operation of the local conference organisers and editors. We therefore propose that their roles should be changed as well:

2: the annual conferences should be organised in such a way as to support Recommendation 1. Specifically, (a) there should be separate academic sessions for innovative and non-innovative research, and (b) local editors should receive CAA support for the peer review process.  

Actions to be undertaken at the 2004 AGM

The two proposals specified above will be put to the AGM in Prato, and the AGM will be asked to vote on a motion to charge the Steering Committee (or a new ad hoc committee) with making preparations for their implementation. This entails:

1)       editorial policies, including peer review, can no longer be entirely left to the local organisers, so CAA must provide guidelines and, where necessary, change the statutes.

2)       the long-term availability of digital conference proceedings on the CAA website or elsewhere must be ensured; CAA must formulate a strategy for this.